Maxine Beneba Clarke takes major poetry prize

The power of poetry to say a lot with a little has long attracted Yarraville writer Maxine Beneba Clarke.

Fifteen years after she began playing with the words craft, she has taken out the coveted prize for poetry in the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards with Carrying the World, her third published collection.

Clarke was also shortlisted in the non-fiction category for The Hate Race, her memoir about growing up in middle-class suburbia as an Australian of Afro-Caribbean descent.